Marianne Boesky Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of new work by Venezuelan artist Ivette Zighelboim. This is the artist's first solo project at the gallery.
In Zighelboim's world animals act as surrogates for the human condition – explorers of human emotion, the question of being and the inevitability of mortality. In past works fireflies and vultures have depicted a symbiosis between light and dark and the theme of being watched. The ephemeral glow of a firefly is paired against the infinite patience of a vulture waiting for the death of others for its own survival. While one may automatically cast the vulture in a sinister light as a scavenger, Zighelboim treats all of her creatures with equal respect focusing instead on the vulnerability she sees in them. When looking at Zighelboim's work one realizes how one's own experiences and perspective come in to play. Does one see a threatening or loving scene? Is the animal in repose or death?
In the current exhibition Zighelboim continues the exploration of animals and nature, returning to the theme of the elephant for the show's two paintings. These finely painted elephants are suspended between their own weight and the lightness with which they are rendered. They almost float in a dreamlike state – the elephants themselves caught in the middle of a really good dream, yet they are weighed down by the possibility that the creatures may actually dead. The artist's palette of pale blue and violet pastels creates an atmosphere of innocence and vulnerability. The light yielding to a fading time or a fading memory…the elephants fabled trait. Finally, positioned in the center of the room, an alabaster "Ghost Head" stares at the viewer. Fixed in a strange agony, the spectral head personifies fading memories with its deeply cut eyes echoing the Baobab's black hole.
Ivette Zighelboim lives and works in New York. The artists work is currently on view at New York University's Strauss Institute. She was included in the 2008 Busan Biennial in Busan, Korea, and had a solo exhibition at Patrick Painter Gallery in 2007.